Dambisa Moyo was born in Lusaka, Zambia, graduated from Oxford and Harvard, made a distinguished career for herself at Investment Firm Goldman Sachs, was a consultant for the World Bank and in 2009 TIME Magazine included her in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Moyo became famous by proving that financial aid towards African nations can condemn Africans to poverty.


For Moyo, donations—giving away—money to African governments, like international institutions tend to do, is related with corruption, foments dependency and contributes in increasing the bureaucracy that inhibits the surge of a business class since citizens prefer serving the government apparatus—artificially financed—instead of doing business for themselves. She also argues that a government financed by the exterior does not have the incentives to be responsive with its citizens, and because of this it lacks transparency, account statements and rule of law; which in turn discourages investment, with which economic growth slows down, population increases faster than job availability and the poverty level rises, with donators giving more “aid”, making this perverse cycle become stronger.

In this context, economist Dambisa Moyo surprised the world with her book, “Dead Aid”, in which she sustains that African poverty can end only if the African nations can turn to new long-term financial mechanisms.

This week Mexican poverty level numbers were made known. Luis Mejía Guzman, sub secretary for Sedesol (the Social Development Secretariat), said that Mexicans with food poverty increased from 14.4 million in 2006 to 19.5 million in 2008. Ernesto Cordero, Secretary of the Treasury, recognized that “in the last measure from the Coneval (the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy), during last year’s crisis, there was a partial measure of three fourths of the crisis, with an increase of 5 million 800 thousand, in other words, almost 6 million Mexicans had fallen to conditions of poverty”. These are alarming facts, unfortunately the mechanisms to battle poverty are not working.

If giving money like it is given is not the solution for the fight against poverty, what is? Moyo states that in the next 10 years foreign aid has to reduce dramatically. The purpose of this is to pressure African countries to implement financing strategies for development for the long term that cover four elements: commerce, direct foreign investment, micro financing and access to international capital markets. Moyo suggests substituting “dead aid”—that doesn’t work—with a new strategy worth considering.

A couple of weeks ago the Aspen Ideas Festival 2010 took place; an international forum where leaders from several parts of the world participated, amongst which were Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan and Bill Clinton. Ricardo Salinas’ conference was particularly relevant since, like Moyo, he proposes new ideas to push development forward. For starters he poses two ways of giving aid: the first is in case of emergency (humanitarian aid), when by any disaster a population is disabled to cover its necessities for survival—nourishment, dress, healthcare or accommodation—like is the case for the earthquake in Haiti or the floods in northern Mexico, in these cases aid must be direct, immediate and charitable; the second way is to give aid for sustainable development, it is helping a community stand on its own in the medium to long term.

The second way of giving aid is more complex, which is why Ricardo Salinas suggests the requirement of implementing public policies towards the formation of human capital; evaluating environmental impact to search for sustainable development; and building an efficient regulatory framework where rule of law prevails, bureaucratic regulation is fought, business creation is facilitated and the entry of new competitors, because, as he pointed out, inefficiency leads to corruption.

We have insisted on fighting poverty for decades with the same mechanisms and we always get the same results: more poverty, corruption, favoritism and bureaucracy. Like Ricardo Salinas well pointed out, paraphrasing Einstein’s insanity principle, “different results cannot be expected by always doing the same thing”. We must change strategies and the definition of these must pass through the participation of citizen organizations.

It is illogical to expect fewer poverty, crime, efficient government, academic success or success at sports if we keep doing the same things—e.g. sustaining prohibition and excluding citizens from decision making—. If we do not become aware that our public policies do not work, these will keep on being “Dead Aid”: “help” that does not help, but is detrimental and impoverishing.

No one saw it coming, but since 2004 numerous books by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris—the so-called four horsemen of the new atheism—have positioned themselves on the list of the best selling books in the world. Yes, nations such as the United States, which prints “in God we trust” on its money, are living a public debate between faith and rationality.

Under the question “Is God really dead? —in reference to the famous Time Magazine cover for April 8th, 1966—Philosophy Now magazine, in its edition for April-May, gathers several articles to attempt to clear up the “New Atheism” movement. Following are some of the ideas exposed there.


First things first: What does atheism mean? For many people it means not believing in God. But what does God mean? Atheism has been founded in the negation of the existence of a supreme being like monotheist religions describe, chiefly: Judaism, Christianity and Islam: “a supreme, self-conscious, omnipotent, omniscient, just and benevolent being”, creator of the heavens and the earth with everything within; independent and distinguished of what he has created.

This perspective supposes the compatibility within a single being of what Andrew Pessin calls key attributes: “omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), perfect kindness, eternity, immutability and the such”. Throughout history many thinkers have asked themselves if such attributes can be compatible. Paul Clieur, in his article “The varieties of atheist experience” gathers some of these questions: If God is omniscient and hence can see the future, then how can we have free will?, well the determinism should be true, but it God is not responsible for human evil, then determinism must be fake. What was God doing before creating the world? And can one force an omnipotent being into being just and kind? Clieur points out that the people who affirm that said attributes are compatible, have been called “theists”; those who deny it, “atheists”.

What about polytheism, however? What about those who conceive God in a different light than monotheism? According to the definition of atheist, a polytheist can be considered atheist since he negates the monotheist conception of God. Arguments that defy monotheism are not valid with polytheism or any other form of supernatural belief, since each one has its own characteristics. Which is why some thinkers have proposed atheism to be understood as the negation of any God or Gods, independently of their attributes. Some consider this definition as “dogmatic atheism” since instead of sustaining rational arguments that discredit an irrational belief; they end up promoting “non belief”. But let’s not get lost in an exam of definitions, what is relevant ultimately is to publicly question and debate the ideas.

What’s new in atheism? The cover for the April 8th, 1966 edition of Time magazine is relevant because it showed a society willing to openly question its founding father’s beliefs. Even so, atheism only penetrated a marginal minority for four decades, but now things seem to be changing. Many citizens who considered themselves believers said they did not have time to participate in their churches, lived in a secular way and were indecisive or indifferent before the atheist-religious debate, this was the attitude of a crushing majority, until now. The aphorism says “there is no convert who’s not a radical”, and it seems appropriate to me to describe the growing polarization that there is on religious themes, since there are more fundamentalists every day, but more atheists as well.

A source of renewed interest for atheism is the insertion of science in popular culture, the debate between creationism and evolution is the archetype example of it, but not the only one. The authors of the new atheism not only question, logically, the attributes of a supreme being, they also use science to dismantle the dogmas of faith (Dawkins), examine religion as a natural but expendable phenomenon (Dennett), and use rhetoric to signal the atrocities that have been made in the name of religion (Harris and Hitchens).

The most distinctive feature of the new atheism is probably its growing popularity: you can find it in the media and in coffeehouse discussions, it is transmitted in simple and provocative language, is founded in widely spread ideas, never stops questioning, and what is most relevant is that it has a significant correlation with high academic and IQ levels.

The reader can consult participations from Hitchens, Harris and Dennett at the La Ciudad de las Ideas 2008 and 2009 Festivals at http://www.ciudaddelasideas.com/, Dawkins will participate this year.

A group of young people is heard: ¡ México! ¡México! ¡México! While Mexican flags wave all over the Paseo de la Reforma. Random distracted passersby join in the celebration supposing that ‘we won!’ Before the watchful eye of the police, that pretends to elude the threat of disorder, celebrating fans are not phased and all that withheld passion manifests itself with force. More cheers and enthusiastic shouts filled with Mexican pride: Yes we can! Yes we can! Like the chorus of a creed, a creed that more than confirms, pretends to negate, defy or discredit the archetype that rules over the mind of Mexican fate, which predisposes us with a cultural code: “no we can’t”, “we dominated but we couldn’t do it”.

The first half was different from every other one of our first halves: domination and shots to goal, but at the same time it was the same as always: without anything concrete. The second half was better, Mexico played very well, dominated; but the local team marked the first goal of this cup. The Mexican team would accomplish the tie but only that. The field lacked forcefulness, expectations were a dime a dozen in the streets of Mexico City.


At the feet of the Angel of Independence is the other, the same old one, drunk on the escape that is the world cup celebration: celebrating a tie like a victory. But he’s also the introspect who recognizes the fleeting pause in the celebration. He knows that when the cup is over, the day-to-day search for work and the need to pay rent and his children’s education are not going to disappear, though that doesn’t matter for now. It is a time for truce and self-delusion. He knows that though the crowd’s euphoria feeds “What is Mexican” it won’t be able to satisfy the hunger of a single citizen. This man, wrapped in the flag screams both for his passion at being Mexican and for the anger against the Mexico that frustrates him.

Looking at the picture there is no doubt. This is the moment of reflection that stops the bicentennial and centennial time. The passionate soccer fan confirms it without a doubt: all that is Mexican exists and proves that one can survive bad government and apathetic citizens with hope. However, the Mexican is a warrior, a fighter, an athlete of resistance. Whoever does not participate in this collective hope is not a patriot. It is against the rules not to get drunk, not to believe, not to bet on change, not to live the ephimeral as if it were permanent. It is against the rules to not dream.


What is the imaginary of current Mexico? There is no society without an image of itself. The image of the inaugural match between Mexico and South Africa narrates in multiple ways our fears and aspirations, our superstition and faith in the chieftains; a mixture of millenial and contemporary elements, past and present, divisions and visions. The aformentioned to configure the country’s “momentum”. A time and space of amnesia towards the lacerating pains and the eternal frustration of the insecurity of living the here and now.

It is complicated to describe the aspiration for a victory that is foreign and owned at the same time. How to reconcile the world cup party that will flood the country with the interminable list of pending unattended issues? If only the quality of being teh winner were as contagious as the hope that our eleven chieftains awaken, perhaps there would be less celebration for a tie (1-1) but more pride and sense of belonging; if only we wouldn’t assume the “religious duty” of having to be hopefull of new victories until the next game, perhaps everyone would be capable of imposing themselves with daily goals, of demanding victories, of resisting pretexts, of conquering fears and assuming risks. Even so, enjoying the hope of winning in a world cup tastes just as ephimeral as foreign, is deliciously cynic, is a pleasure that—like millions of Mexicans—I cannot ignore.

The game liberates us from everyday tensions, rescues us from social polarization forcing us to ignore—at least for a moment—our differences and concentrate on that which identifies us. The game joins us under the same chorus—Yes we can!— , offers us a common objective—victory— , a shared promise—emotion—and recognition—status—of “what is Mexican” as virtuous.

The game is limited to a pause, a catharsis, a moment to forget our everyday problems. As with every celebration, the game has an end, victories or ties are a breath of survival with a temporary and emotive reach; its limits are impassable. If the celebration comes from the victorious Mexico we imagine and wish for; the limits of this celebration arise from the real Mexico, the black and white one; the one we perceive in the news and that suffers in the streets. The Mexico that still needs to “become reality” and that does not win, like in South Africa, perhaps, achieving the tie.

We must live the other life today, the imaginary, the fantastic, the unreal, the palliative and pleasurable that shouts: Yes we can!

In the 50s popular novelist and scientist Isaac Asimov published “The End of Eternity”, where he talks about time travelers searching to maximize human happiness throughout history. As it is in science fiction novels, the author tries to describe how entertainment and communication will be like in the future.

But what about today’s futurists? What will the world, humanity and emotions be like in a decade or in a century? Several weeks ago, motivated by the “La Ciudad de las Ideas” Festival, I interviewed two scientists whose idea of the future is very much leaning towards science fiction.

I visited Ray Kurzweil in his office at Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. Kurzweil proposes that in the following decade we will be able to have translating telephones that allow us to talk to and understand anyone regardless of what language they speak; in less than two decades 3D auditory and visual reality, as well as new tactile stimulating mediums well allow people to relate with one another, in a way that is closer to actual personal contact, independent of physical proximity; in less than three decades eye implants will be used (similar to contact lenses) and cochlear implants that will allow one to connect to the internet; by mid XXI century nano-production food will be consumed, which will eliminate the limitations towards the production of food imposed by factors in climate.

In New York University’s planetarium, theoretical physicist and author of “Physics of the Impossible” Dr. Michio Kaku described a vision of future technology, which coincides with Kurzweil in some aspects. He sustains that in less than twenty years the Internet will be inside our contact lens, wherever we look we will be able to see images. You can see another person and your contact lens will recognize them and show you their biography, and if they speak in another language you will be able to see subtitles. If you go to Rome you will be able to see the ruins, through your contact lens, as they were 2000 years ago.

According to Dr. Kaku we will see things in this century that we once thought were impossible: invisibility, teleportation and telepathy. In his words: “Telepathy was considered impossible until recently, now we have brain scans that allow us to calculate the movement of blood within the brain so we can see thoughts and decode them with a computer, so paralyzed people today could have a chip implanted in their brain, connect it to a laptop and be able to do crossword puzzles, send email, play videogames and more. In the future, we will be able to enter a room and telepathically turn on computers, move objects, everything with the power of the mind, since the brain is a radio transmitter, it can connect itself to a computer that will allow moving objects and doing things previously considered impossible.”

Invisibility could be possible in less than two decades. Experiments are being made, in which they place an object on a coil over which microwaves are emitted, this creates the illusion of it disappearing. Kaku explains that “microwaves envelop the object and reform on the other side as if it were not there. Think about water: it goes around the rock and reforms on the other side, so if you are downstream you don’t know there’s a rock there, and now in Berkeley and CalTech we have proven that visible light can also envelop an object, something previously thought as impossible. Now we have a problem with this, since if I have a cylinder enveloping me I cannot see outside, I am blinded, and have to punch two holes on the cylinder, so if someone was standing there they would see two eyes floating in the air”.

And finally, what about teleportation? Kaku told us that it is already possible, at least with light particles and atoms. “Getting there with molecules will take more time, so let us think that maybe water or carbon dioxide, perhaps DNA at some point will also be able to teleport in this way”.

It seems that ideas that we consider SCI-FI today will be a reality in the near future, made from science and technology (SCI-Fact). Imagination is the inspiration for science after all.

In this year that our Mexico commemorates the Bicentennial of the Independence and the Centennial of the Revolution, let us not dwell in the past, let us think about the next 200 years, on the origins of the future, on a world reinvented.

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
April 18th, 2010

Let us clean Our Mexico. Let us clean it from insecurity, corruption, apathy, resentment, and impunity, from ghosts who hinder our development, from organized crime, from over-regulations, inefficient bureaucracies, from partydocracy, xenophobia, homophobia, feminicide, from ancestral complex. Let us clean Our Mexico from garbage, filth, from fear.

I celebrate and congratulate the citizen movement “Limpiemos Nuestro México” (Let us Clean Our Mexico) initiated by Grupo Salinas and Fundación Azteca, and collaborated by Alonso Lujambo (The National Secretary of Public Education) and Rafael Elvira Quesada (The National Secretary of the Environment), but above all, acted upon by more than two million citizens.

The transcendent aspect of this initiative is that it goes beyond what at first sight seems merely a public policy for cleaning and environmental health since it entails, at least, five important collateral effects for celebrating “Limpiemos Nuestro México”:

1. It Generates wealth and prosperity:

Robert Putnam, Public Policy Scholar at Harvard, through several studies showed that the difference between the rich and poor zones in Italy and other regions of the world is owed to the generation of social capital and the initiatives of citizen culture. Participating in community glee clubs or orchestras (PROMESA in Mexico or EL SISTEMA in Venezuela, for example). Reading clubs, soccer associations, environmental advocacy communities, Citizen Watch Programs for security and more similar examples generate a social richness that empowers the citizen and makes them prone to creativity and cooperation. This proves that, together, we are capable of changing things. Observing a park, an avenue, a public space before and after having been cleaned, proves what we can do with our life, our home and our country. “Limpiemos Nuestro México” (Let us Clean Our Mexico-yes, OURS) is a prime paradigmatic example.

2. Insecurity and fear reduction:

In their renown “Broken Windows” article on The Atlantic Monthly Review, authors Wilson and Kellig show that clean and orderly streets, parks, neighborhoods, and regions, reduce crime and mitigate the fear of the citizens (the two main indicators for public insecurity). The reason is simple, a potential delinquent is more likely to steal or assault a house with broken windows and filthy unkempt streets, than one where the citizenry takes care and cleans their vital space, by the mere fact that order and cleanliness are correlated significantly with an increase in the probabilities that a crime be denounced and persecuted. Which is why, “Limpiemos Nuestro México” is not only a provocation towards eliminating garbage, but for mitigating insecurity and fear as well. “Limpiemos Nuestro México” is an example of what the public, private and social sectors can add up—empowering ourselves—for taking care of what is ours.

3. Empowering the citizen:

Every day we are faced with the knowledge of millions of people wanting to change the country, to do something for our fellow man, not willing to get frustrated for being impotent before the dominating system. A movement that allows us to put a stop to all that immediately, visibly, measurably and for real, containing an exponential effect to promote empowerment, demand cleanliness in every sphere we are get involved in: with the government, with business, with daily transactions. It induces us to empower ourselves effectively and take action.

4. Developing sustainability and conscience for the planet we..

Recycling garbage, consuming biodegradable products, taking care of our street, our community, the country and the planet are necessary conditions for a sustainable and diverse development. The future of our children, our own future, of our Mexico, demands a world with conscience and action in favor of the environment and diversity. Which is why: Let us clean Our Mexico!

5. Build a Civic Culture:

We citizens must empower ourselves with rights, but with responsibilities as well. We are obligated—yes, obligated—to sanction whoever dirties Our Mexico; but that’s not all. “Limpiemos Nuestro México” is an initiative where not only are we obligated to not throw garbage and frown upon those who do; we are obligated to pick up trash that isn’t ours; which is why I celebrate this movement.

Anyway, we are constantly questioning and criticizing initiatives. Today, there is the occasion for celebrating and congratulating ourselves for these kind of civic-citizen examples that we must multiply exponentially and practice not only one day a year, but our entire life!

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
April 11th, 2010

Lana Turner once said: “A successful man is the one who wins more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is the one who can find a man like this”. This seems to be the idea that inspires Jenny’s parents in the movie “An Education” (2009).

In this plot, based on Lynn Barber’s memoires, sixteen year old Jenny meets David Goldman, a mature man who dazzles her with fancy dinners, fun and trips. Before the promise of a life full of luxury Jenny will have to decide what is better for her: marrying David—like her parents encourage her to—or keep with her studies to get into Oxford—like her parents wished before meeting David—What would you do? What would you expect your daughter to decide?

I talked about the film with several people, men and women, and the majority told me that it reflects a reality: women prefer to marry rich men. This is what the US calls “Marrying Up”, or like a friend of mine put it : “marrying well”. Is it human nature? Is it a cultural phenomenon?

Nanell and David Barash (him, a professor at the University of Washington), in their book “Madame Bovary’s Ovaries” sustain that women give more value, than men, to socio-economic status as a quality to choose a mate. Evolutionary psychologists call this phenomenon hypergamy. There are several psycho-bio-social theories that try to explain it; one of them is the hypothesis of structural impotence. This explains that if men control the resources in a society, the only way that women can access these resources, power and status lifting is by marrying men that already have them. The aforementioned is documented in traditional societies such as the Inuit (eskimos), in Alaska.

In “The anatomy of love” Helen Fisher affirms that it is no surprise that harems exist where cultural patterns allow it. Men desire polygamy because it allows them to have a greater lineage. To have many wives, however, it is necessary to have enough resources to guarantee a certain quality of life to their wives and offspring. According to Fisher “women enter harems to obtain resources and guarantee their children’s survival”.

But if this is the case, what happens to hypergamy in societies where women can ascend socially by their own academic merits and work efforts? A study made by David Buss out of the University of Texas showed that, even among successful women, the more resource access a man has, he is valued better as a potential mate. Buss identified financially successful women, measuring their income, and contrasted their mate preferences with women with lower income. When interpreting Buss’s study, Barash points out: “financially successful women had a good education, had the tendency of having professional degrees, and greater self-esteem. The study showed that Successful women value mates with a professional degree, high social status, greater intelligence, tall independent and with a high self esteem more than those of lesser professional success”.

The hypothesis of structural impotence anticipated that in the measure that women have access to resources, their preferences for men of greater status and income would reduce. But this was not the case.

From another perspective—from evolutionary psychology—hypergamy makes sense since it was an evolutionary strategy for millions of years that allowed our ancestors to ensure the reproduction and sustenance of their lineage. Scientists explain it thusly: since a man is capable of getting several women pregnant in a short period of time, women would need to find men with the greatest status possible that would grant them access to resources even if they have to share their mate, with or without knowledge of cause. This could explain why dominant, rich, high status men marry women from a lower status and not the other way around.

Understanding our nature, instead of suppressing it, is indispensable to make better personal and public policy choices. After all, if the subjacent objective in the evolutionary strategy of “marrying up” is counting on the access to resources, stability and greater survival opportunities to the coming generation, today there are other ways to achieve it.

Education brings the opportunity of being independent, successful and stable to both genders equally. Why expect something from someone what one can do by him/herself? As many studies point out, education is the main factor that allows socioeconomic ascension. That’s what I told my daughter, I said:

Dear, never forget that a good education, is the only husband that—for sure—will never leave you.

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
March 6th, 2010

During a broadcast of my show El Debate: Pensar México (The Debate: Thinking Mexico) I asked why does couple love vanish over time? Why is there more enthusiasm for seeing your significant other, more desire, more tolerance more resignation towards personal preference at the beginning of your relationship? Panelists not only answered my question, we received quite a lot of emails from viewers voicing their opinion. In general, we could classify their answers in the following manner:

1. At the beginning or a relationship people look for romantic love, which only prospers with novelty, mystery and danger and dissipates when novelty transforms into habit and what was mysterious becomes common encounter.

2. Being in a relationship not only implies sharing your life with someone, one of the main incentives when looking for a mate is getting pleasure. Bluntly put, intimate encounter. But the question is how to reconcile this initial desire with other characteristics of romantic love like compromise and admiration. Because of it, initial love tends to degrade towards friendship leaving passion aside or transforms into purely sexual encounter.

3. Romantic love disappears because it is inspired in the “man/woman of my dreams”, an ideal. We fall in love under the veil of fantasy, women search for their prince and men search for their princess but time leads to reality and disillusion.

4. The reason is that times change and people change. We yearn for stability in our relationship, but with time circumstances lead us to modify our interest, taste and preference. Without warning, we hear the phrase “you’ve changed a lot”. The fact is that many people want to fall in love to give their lives meaning. It often works, for a while.

There is some truth in each and every one of the previous explanations. Generally speaking, they coincide in that it is not a matter of romantic love having the tendency to disappear, but that we actually make the effort to degrade it. Evolutionary psychology could tell us why.

Throughout our evolution, human animals have been developing diverse strategies for survival and reproduction. One of these strategies is assuming risks. In the same way that fear is an instinctive lesson inherited from our ancestors to escape the clutches of a predator, taking risks allowed our ancestors to reproduce, gain power and experiment with a greater variety of prey, food, climate, environment, etc. Risk brought a diet richer in proteins, it helped human beings expand throughout the planet and obtain greater resources for survival and transcendence.

And like risk, adrenaline and danger are part of human nature; in another sense our instincts reveal the necessity of feeling secure.

While compiling date about divorce in different societies, anthropologist Helen Fisher found surprising patterns. The majority of people divorced around the fourth year of marriage, their age was around twenty five and/or they only had one child in their care. Coincidentally, some anthropologists—based on the observation of traditional societies with a lifestyle controlled by constant physical effort, a light diet and little weightgain, apart from long lactancy periods—suggest that four years is the habitual time that marked frequency of birth for our ancestors.

Considering the previous, Fisher sustains that across 3.5 million years the human animal learned to live with a mate, at least for four years, enough time for the offspring to have a certain autonomy. Throughout these millions of years they affirmed feelings of attachment and security, and the brain circuits that gave birth to the cumulus of emotion which we call love configured.

It is not a coincidence that the word “familiar” comes from “family”. The importance of bloodline, which gives us comfort, peace. Our nature demands certainty, familiarity, protection, in other words: the illution of stability.

Then on one hand we need adventure, risk, mystery, surprise and on the other we need stability, security and certainty. Anxiety doesn’t allow us plain reproduction but neither does it allow monotony, our brain is programmed to relive the adventure of romantic love.

The human animal needs both: security and risk, familiar and novelty. Sometimes we find ways of chasing this yearning in an alternate way, sometimes in delicate balance with the mate. Due to being pulled in opposite directions, a balance between security and risk can only be transitory.

Romantic love attracts with its promise of security. Nevertheless, love is not static “you cannot simply pause your instinct”, if you are satisfied with security today it’s because you took a risk a short time ago and maybe you will want to do it again. Romantic love is destabilizing by nature.

Based on the previous statement, the real question is not—as is manifested in the majority of literature on the subject—why do we fall in love?; rather how do we manage to stay in love?

The answer is the conception that the human being changes and in the process demands, on one stance to reinvent and recreate fantasies, passion and adventure with the significant other, while on the other stance, pro-healing, caring and offering stability in the space-time of security and certainty that our own nature demands. A fight between opposing forces, an equilibrium—that can, in fact, be achieved—has the best of both worlds; “passion and certainty, till death do us part”.

Today, a great number of people are going to wake up and the first thing that they will do is check their zodiac to see how the day is going to turn out, afterwards they will go out and talk about “The Secret” book and about what their thinking will bring them. It is likely that they will go to their “psychic” later so that they can find out what love and destiny has in store for them. Many will Google for more answers. We suffer from anxiety for magical and immediate solutions, for getting answers.

According to the US Dept. of Treasury, the religious fervor lived during the Civil War, allowed in 1864 to get coins minted with the motto IN GOD WE TRUST. A sign of this “secular State” living the oxymoron of feeling itself blessed.

More than a century later, in 1996, two Stanford doctorate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, started to develop the BackRub search engine. Their success was such that they soon required a bigger infrastructure and a new name.

After exchanging some ideas, they decided on Google. A word-game with from “googol”, a mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The use of this term pretends to reflect its mission: organizing an apparently infinite quantity of information over the web for its easy location.

That’s how Google was born. It is said that it is the best place to work, Forbes calculates its founder’s fortune at 30.6 billion dollars and on fifth place worldwide on the list of the richest people on the planet. Why? It is not only a matter of their fortune, but of their capacity to influence the world, to offer anwers and make “the world an easier place”.

Imagine you are the owner of a hotel and that every time someone Googles words such as rest, fun, hotel, etc. the first name that appears on the search engine’s list is your webpage. Can you imagine having this advantage over your competitors?

Millions of students base their school work on the information they find thanks to this search engine; it allows millions of professionals to benchmark (look at what their competitors are doing and take the best practices), when people notice some change in their body they usually google their problem before attending a physician and many “creative minds” use it for “ideas and inspiration”.

Summed up, we are used to trusting the search engine—mainly Google’s—information provided to make work, entertainment, education, communication, even relationships and every aspect of our life easier. It seems that the case for the Western world is “In Google We Trust.”

Many people find it almost impossible to live without being “connected”. A few years ago cancelling television time was the favorite punishment for parents towards their children, now it doesn’t work much if a child uses Internet for their homework since they can find music, video, games, reading material and much more.

Internet is generating new habits and ways of thinking with profound implications for humanity. We are in awe before so much available information a click away, that often times navigating becomes a purpose in an of itself. While we are in the information superhighway, who cares where we are going? There’s the impression that if we want to find out something we merely have to google the right word.

To benchmark or copying and pasting everything we find on the net is not only unethical, it is mediocre, it is renouncing original thought: Hummer or Mini Cooper would not exist if they had been based on something already existing with the only purpose of bettering it (benchmarking); it is to stop asking questions to admit life principles that we might not even understand, it is renouncing new and surprising truths, it is to stop innovating and reinventing ourselves.

By making browsers our way to solve doubts we stop discovering truths and focus on finding them in the net. But Internet does not have the truth, only a lot of information and Google is not an omnisapient being capable of satistying our curiosity to lead us to the truth. It is just a medium for connecting inquisitive minds.

We need to recognize that humanity does not know everything and—more importantly—that each and every one of us does not need to know everything. Knowledge changes, what we now take as truth, a few years ago was science ficition, and in a few years will be an erroneous idea, an anecdote, or obsolete knowledge. If it is true that the future is a slippery target, our biggest opportunity to be right is to not stop questioning ourselves.

“Fortunate are those venturing in the world of Internet”. Googling is without a doubt a tool that can save us transaction costs; however, it is also a tool that can atrophy our inquisitive, curious, mind. We live in the world of answers, not questions. Is it time to change the world? I don’t know, it’s only a question.

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
December 26th, 2009

I remember my children asking me once, when they were very small, “dad, do you know why the sea is blue?” good grief! How could I explain to small children optical concepts I barely remembered? And so before my hesitation… both said at the same time “because the fish go blue blue”… followed by laughter.

If it is true that humans are profoundly curious, we also love simplicity. Imagine a supermarket where they sold explanations to life, which in one shelf would sell two products: one that promises to make us question and reflect upon to find our own solutions and next to this one that promises an easy life, if we follow the 7 habits or rules it proposes. Which one would you buy? I’ve got the impression that the majority would chose to follow rules.

The problem is that the advice we are given, the ones that promise a life of success, are not always useful. The majority of books, videos and self-help converences only achieve their author’s success. Why are they so successful? Why don’t they fulfill their promise?

Because they are full of what logic calls non-sequiturs. An argumentation whose conclusion is not consistent with its promises, whose conclusion can be true or false. But fake in and of itself, since there is a disconnection between premise and conclusion.

Generally speaking, the majority of bad arguments are varieties of non-sequiturs: they come to conclusions that don’t follow through.

The problem is that non-sequiturs are not only in self-help literature. They are also present in ancestral traditions, in the way parents educate their children, ideologies, in the ideas over which legal systems and public policy are built.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach proved to be a brilliant exponent of NON-SEQUITURS at the debate that he participated in against Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett at the “La Ciudad de las Ideas” festival in the city of Puebla last November (you can see this debate on YouTube titled “debate en Puebla” or at www.ciudaddelasideas.com)

His surreal argumentation went something more or less like this: 1) Hitler, like other totalitarian dictators, perceived himself as atheist; 2) Totalitarian dictators have been genocidal; 3) “which is why” atheism leads to genocide.

Shmuley Boteach, nevertheless, doesn’t offer solid arguments as to why we should link Hitler and the beliefs he loathes. His argumentation is based on implying guilt by association: placing two things that don’t have an apparent connection, with the hope of one thing’s bad rep tainting the other.

The same trick can be applied to an astonishing quantity of beliefs and practices. Would love be bad if the devil would’ve loved? Would books be bad since “Mein Kampf” (‘My Struggle’ by Adolf Hitler) is a book? Should we avoid teaching history and geography since Pol Pot promoted them? Of course not.

The Nazis were very keen towards ecology, public manifestation, mandatory physical education and staying in shape. If you do not agree with any of these things, then mention Nazi politics next time you want to add an argumentative punch in your favor. And if a vegetarian bothers you while you eat your T-bone steak you can always challenge your critic reminding them that Hitler also avoided meat.

But, like there are bad arguments that base themselves on guilt by association, there are others just as dangerous that use “values by association.”

An example of this is Mario Cuomo, who being a public server exposed vehemently, before the Auditorium at the University of Notre Dame, that as a catholic he has the firm conviction of disapproving abortion. Nevertheless, given the fact that he also has the responsibility of being the representative of people with diverse respectable convictions and values, he should put the people he represent’s convictions above his own.

The problem with value by association is that it fails to prove what is really good or bad with the things it criticizes or defends. If the majority of the citizenship wants to annihilate those who have green eyes or exempt women into public office, should we all allow this, even when we think it is atrocious and we oppose it, just because the majority decided so?

Nothing is good nor bad simply because it has been touched by the hand of evil; or that a good cause enters into conflict because of any conviction. If someones sustains that something is wrong, why, instead of trying to make it seem wrong by association, not prove it so.

Let’s pay attention when argumentative conviction is defended under democratic pretexts or under associations for evil. Let’s pay attention in the arguments and not believe everything that is said since we can fall into a non-sequitur trap. Let’s bet on conviction, not arguments.

Published in Opinión y Análisis
El Universal
December 12th, 2009